1. Technical Field
The illustrative embodiments generally relate to using a vehicle data system for medical data acquisition and provision.
2. Background
Keeping an accurate account of medical records and patient health data may sometimes be a difficult task. Patients may visit numerous doctors, and may often times fail to record data that they're being asked to track about themselves. Further, due to inconvenience and limitations on time, patients may fail to, or simply not realistically be able to track certain data that would otherwise be useful for diagnosis and medical assistance.
For example, if a patient has high blood pressure or a stress related condition, the patient may be asked to track blood pressure or heart rate periodically. Since many people live lives packed with numerous activities, it may become difficult or near impossible for a patient to actually monitor this data with a recommended frequency. Additionally, even if the medical data is measured, the patient may fail to accurately track all of the data. Finally, there is a possibility that the patient will forget to bring some or all of the data when reporting to a physician.
Some of the difficulties with medical record tracking are addressed by solutions such as MICROSOFT HEALTHVAULT and GOOGLE HEALTH. These voluntary record-keeping services allow users to consolidate their medical data into one accessible source. Data from a variety of different physicians, pharmacists, dentists, optometrists, etc., can all be conglomerated in a single place.
Further, some of these services offer additional connection capabilities for medical monitoring devices. HEALTHVAULT, for example, has the ability to store data from heart rate monitors (HRMs), blood pressure monitors (BPMs), wireless scales, etc. It may also be possible to connect other wireless devices to HEALTHVAULT.
In an environment where wireless sensors are reporting gathered information to a service such as HEALTHVAULT, those sensors typically require a local network over which they can transmit the data. While such networks may be easily available at a user's house, when a user is not in the home it may be difficult to find a network that is accessible. Further, if the user is not carrying or using a sensor at a given time, the data simply cannot be measured or taken down.
In addition to health monitoring devices, various exercise assistance and wellness devices may record data pertaining to athletic activity. This data may then be transferred, via, for example, a home wireless network, to a remote site or computer for analysis and tracking.